by Tara Brown
Lyle gave him a savage look and shook his head. Greg swallowed. “Gwyn, I can’t hit you.”
I nodded. “You must. We need to fit in. You said the women are beaten down. I look too clean and too much like a stranger.”
He knit his eyebrows together. I could see his chest rising and falling faster. He gave Lyle a look. Lyle turned his back on us. He refused to watch.
Greg made a fist and swung, backhanding me. The impact felt like my face was exploding. I cried out as I toppled over. Greg was on me instantly. “I’m so sorry. I‘m so sorry. Please, don’t ask me to do that again. Please.”
I could feel the instant swelling as blood filled my cheek. I spat it onto the board floor. I held my face and tried to smile at my brother but my eyes were watering.
Lyle was breathing heavily as he pulled on a tunic of sorts. He sighed and passed one to Greg. He gave me his hand, helping me up from the floor. “You okay?”
I nodded. “It will be more real.” My lip was split and my cheek was puffy, as if I were hiding food in it.
The clothes in the chest fit us all in a way that made us rumpled and disheveled. I imagined it was perfect. Greg pulled back the sheet curtain and smeared his hand along the filth of the window. He wiped it on his face and hair. I smiled. “Smart.” I did the same. It darkened my hair to a point that it was mousy and filmy.
Lyle looked disgusting, Greg was horrendous, and when they looked at me, they both grimaced.
I whispered hoarsely, “Let’s go.” We walked to the front door again.
Greg whispered, “When I open it, Lyle you go left, and me and Gwyn will go right. We will meet back here at this part of the market. No one makes a move until we agree to a plan.”
They both looked at me. I frowned. “What?”
They rolled their eyes like the river people did and opened the door. I lowered my head and followed Greg’s boots to the right. People laughed and spoke loudly. There was an accent I didn’t understand at first. Their words were muddled and spoken lazily. It took moments before I recognized a word.
Greg walked us down the dried-mud street. I looked up to see his chest out, like a proud bird would do. He was strutting, nodding at people. When I noticed the other men, I saw they were doing the same thing. The women kept their gazes lowered, for the most part, but then there would be a woman with a smug face and a hardened look. She would speak like a man did and spit into the dried mud.
I nearly gagged when I saw the red spit. The people were chewing things and spitting.
My throbbing face was the only thing that kept me grounded. I was actually glad I’d had him do it. Everything was so different. I would be gawking if he had not.
He grabbed my hand and dragged me into a building. It was wall-less and massive. There were huge wooden poles every few steps that served as the support for the high peaked ceiling.
People milled about. We walked through the crowd, across the room and exited out the back.
Through the crowd I could see a large catwalk made of brown boards. Men stood atop it, with only undergarments on. Men with clean skin and beautiful bodies. Men with golden hair and dark shiny hair. Men from my city or one like it. I didn’t recognize anyone of them. They stood atop the catwalk and a woman below shouted something at them. They turned. I whimpered. Their backs were chewed at. Marked by long thin cuts. I lowered my face and closed my eyes. My brother gripped my hand.
The woman shouted again, forcing me to look. The men spun again and then walked off the catwalk. I had seen one used before for a pet showing. The owners had walked the dogs down the catwalk and back. People could pick their family pet from the selection. This felt no different but made my insides boil.
The men were led to a tent-like structure. Next the women were led out. Brooke was the first face I looked for. She wasn’t there. But the faces of the people were familiar. Anna, the schoolteacher, and Clary and Lisle. They were from our group.
Anna sobbed, holding herself tightly.
They were topless and in lower undergarments only. Each woman was shouted at. Slowly their trembling hands lowered from their exposed chests. Fury and anger writhed inside of me like a beast.
I had never seen such degradation.
The crowd admired them as if they were choosing a cut of meat at the butcher.
My heart was broken into a thousand pieces.
The woman shouted and they spun. Several had marked backs like the men did. Their flesh was cut and red.
“AUCTION TOMORROW NIGHT, BASTARDS!” she shouted and stalked off. I could see the whip in her hands and the cruelty in her eyes.
They were a gravitational pull for me. My hand slipped from Greg’s. My body pulled me in their direction. I walked toward the dirty tent. I glanced inside. The woman was shouting at them, making them huddle in groups. Slight sobs and whimpers left their lips but they never raised their eyes to meet hers.
She barked at them again and turned, seeing me.
She laughed. “Ya lookin for a stud, miss?” She said it so fast, I shook my head before I understood the words.
She grabbed one of the darker-skinned beautiful men from the ground, lifting him by his bruised arm. “This one be the kind ya lookin’ fer. Him’s a looker and got the tackle, if ya get me.” She cackled. My eyes were wide.
I shook my head, trying desperately to copy her way of speaking, “Me brother sent me ta look.”
She scowled. “He biddin’ tomorrow then?”
I nodded.
She pointed. “The earlier ya here, the better. Them lookers go first.” She walked me out, closing the tent.
I turned and walked back across the grounds. Greg snatched my hand and pulled me along the dried mud.
“I told you to stay with me.”
I nodded, whispering, “There is no way to get them out. The tent is sealed and in the middle of the busiest part of this area. The woman I spoke to, she could see inside of me, I swear it.”
He growled, “I still told you to stay with me.”
I lowered my eyes and let him drag me across the grounds to the street and back to the part of the market where Lyle was chatting up a man.
His eyes flashed on us. He nodded and walked away from the man. He had the swagger and strange look about him that Greg did. They were better at this than I was.
Lyle walked very close to me, lifting my face. “Your face is swollen.”
I gave him a blank stare. “They are in a tent. Our people are there. I didn’t see any of the river people. They’re all people from the last cities. They’re in a tent surrounded by people.”
He nodded. “Then we need a diversion.”
I frowned. “A what?”
He grimaced. “You go to the tent and wait near that area. When you see people running for a different part of the city, then you get them out and run for the woods. I’ll meet you.”
I shook my head. “No.”
He bent, kissing my bruised cheek. “I love you, Gwyn. I need to say that. I love you. I hated when you were mine because you had to be. I want you to be mine because you want to be.”
I fought my tears and nodded. “I’ll meet you in the woods with an answer to that.”
He scowled harder and glanced at Greg. “I’ll be fast.”
He turned.
Greg gave me a harsh glare. “This is going to end badly.”
I nodded. “I feel like I might be sick.”
He shrugged. “Go ahead. These people don’t care if you get sick on the ground. They’re not picky.”
I grimaced and we walked back to the tent. We hung outside of it, talking to each other. He stroked my cheek, pretending to talk to me but we were watching everyone else.
“I hate that I hit you.”
I nodded. “I wasn’t a fan either, but that lady spoke to me like I was one of these things.”
He sighed. “It’s sickening here. This is disturbing. This is what society looked like before Lisabeth and the pointed people took over?”
/> I shrugged. “I guess so.”
He looked down on me. “Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“It does. It makes perfect sense. We clearly can’t be left to our own devices.”
He shook his head. “Although, the river people do it. I think I could do it. I think this is just a pool of evil.”
In the background, I heard a panicked voice shout.
People started to look to the side of a building as more shouts filled the air.
Greg sighed. “That would be Lyle, I assume?”
Smoke billowed from the far side of the city. I couldn’t see anything but I nodded. “I would imagine it is him.”
The people started rushing in that direction. They dropped their strange-looking mugs of amber liquid and sticks of roasted meat. They ran from their buildings and shanty shops. They dragged women and children in that direction. People were frantically telling each other of the situation in panicked tones.
I slipped to the tent and started undoing the knots. I lifted the flap. “Hurry, we need to run. I’m from The Last City too. Hurry. Anna, it’s me, Gwyn. Tell them it’s okay and you have to follow me. You know me, Anna.”
“I do not know you!” she shouted in a sob.
“IT DOESN’T MATTER, HURRY!” I shouted into the darkness of the tent. They crawled out, not trampling each other or acting crazed as I expected them to. They maintained their composure, even in terror. It was mostly confusion though, I would say. There were about twenty of them. We would never get them out of the city without being spotted.
Greg pointed to a building to the right of us. “Run inside of that building. Hide at the back of it.” He led the way.
They listened. I stood watching as they made their way there. The lady with the whip came running over as the last one was inside. She glared at me and then they opened the flap on her tent. She dropped the whip so that the tip of it touched the ground in a coil. She flicked her wrist, making the whip lash at me. It bit into my skin. I screamed as a red welt formed on my wrist.
Something switched inside of me. I ran at her. The area was empty of people, but the sounds of the screams and shouts from not too far off were too loud for my screams to be heard.
She whipped again, lashing it across my face. I dove at her, taking her to the dried mud. I smashed her head into the flakey ground. My hands gripped her throat. I was nearly blind with rage and tears. The images of the naked-breasted women made me savage.
She struck me hard but I gripped harder, slamming her head back again. My hand went for my thigh. I dragged my dress up as I choked her one handedly. I dragged my knife from the leather, slicing my thigh but ignoring it. Instead, I saw the way her eyes went wide as my hand brought the blade up to her throat. I dragged it across, like she was a fish as she punched at me. Her throat made a gargling noise as her blood spilled out onto the dried mud. I sat back as she struggled for air and with the injury. Her legs kicked but I sat on them, heaving and gasping for air, as the realization of what I had done hit me.
A violent attack hit my right arm. I was dragged back. Greg was screaming at me and shaking me. But I stood there, hollow.
He grabbed the lady and dragged her dying body into her tent. Her bloody throat left a slight trail of fresh red droplets along the dark brown mud. He tied the tent and grabbed my arm.
He pulled me to the house where the rest of them were.
They looked at me and the bloody knife and backed up.
I trembled as I wiped the blood off on the dress and put it back into my holder. A trickle of blood made its way down my thigh. We stood there in the dark for a moment before anyone spoke.
“Where are we?”
I mumbled, “The Undead City. We are taking you back to The Last City. We are going to take back the city.”
They shook their heads. “What are you?”
I looked at Greg. His face was filled with confusion and rage. “I am the superior engineer—I was, at least.” I didn’t want to say it but I knew they would listen to me, if they believed it to be truth. They knew we never spoke untruth.
Greg pushed the plastic glass out of the window and pointed at the tree line. “We need to run into those bushes and up that hill. Your feet will hurt and your bodies will ache, but if you don’t move as fast as you can, they will take you back to this place and sell you as slaves.”
“What is a slave?”
Greg looked at the man who asked, “A slave is a person who works for nothing, gets nothing, and is beaten and abused for the pleasure of the master who owns the slave? The slaves are sold like meat, bread, and apples to these people?”
Their faces were filled with horror.
Greg went first. He looked back at me. “Just do it my way, please.”
I nodded.
When the last of us had made it out of the house and into the trees, I hopped out and ran. I ran hard and fast for the tree line. I could almost hear their feet after me. My imaginations were against me.
My lungs felt like they might explode any second and my feet were bleeding, but I pushed on. I was passing the others. “Hurry, please run faster,” I pleaded. We made it to the top of the hill—a nearly dead group of wounded and naked people.
I pulled off my dress and passed it to the eldest of the women. She sobbed as she pulled it on. I passed out my folded cloths that I had bundled into my dress. Of the ten women, six were clothed. We walked along the crest of the treed hill. The black smoke of the city was much worse. Lyle had started fires in several places. I could see people scrambling from the city and others running around. We were far enough away that we couldn’t make out too many details, but we could see the chaos he had created.
I sat on the rocks, bleeding from my cheek, my thigh, and the inside of my mouth. My knuckles were swollen and bloody. I hadn’t even noticed that I held the whip in my left hand. The people with us glanced at it nervously. I smiled at them but they looked scared of me.
Greg walked back with Michael and Amber. Amber rushed me, wrapping her arms around me. “Are you alright?”
I nodded. “I’m fine.”
She shook her head. “You look a mess.”
I shuddered bitterly. “It’s a pretty big mess down there. I sort of fit in like this.” Tears were brimming my eyes but I refused to cry. Lyle wasn’t back yet. I didn’t want to confess to what I had done. I didn’t wish I had chosen differently. I didn’t regret my decision. I was happy that she was dead and her blood was on my hands. But I didn’t want anyone to see that side of me.
I looked at Michael. “If you take them back to the River City, they will trade them again, won’t they?”
He nodded. “I’m sorry. I should have told you how it worked.”
I sighed. “You should have, but then they wouldn’t have let you stay there, would they?”
He shrugged. “Not likely.”
“Is there anywhere they can go, until we have somewhere more permanent?”
He thought for a minute and then I watched it happen. An idea filled his mind. He nodded. “There is one place. The rules are similar to the river people but the undead fear them.” He paused. “I’m not welcome there, but I can lead them to the gates of the city.”
I crossed my arms. “What kind of place is it and why aren’t you welcome?”
Greg gave me a look like he was about to argue.
Michael ran his dirty hands through his dirty hair. “They are different people. It’s a kingdom. That is what they call it. There is a king and a queen and a castle, and they have an army.”
I frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Greg looked annoyed. “A monarchy. It’s a type of governing system where the king is the ruler and everyone listens to what he says.”
I nodded. “We take them there. How do we get there?”
He pointed. “We walk all night following the guide star.”
I looked back at the mess below us. “You start then and I will wait for Lyle. We will catch up.”
Greg stepped forward. “I’ll wait with you.”
I glanced at the naked people everywhere. “What use will they be if the slavers come back?”
He shook his head. “I’ll wait with you.”
Amber stepped forward too. “Me too.”
Michael sighed. “Oh, I’ll just rescue them alone then.”
Anna stood up and smiled at us weakly. “You have saved us and we understand that; I’m sure we all do. But shouldn’t we have a say in what happens next?”
I shook my head. “No. You’ll all fall asleep tonight, and the reset will make it so you have no idea why you’re on a mountainside, naked.”
Michael grabbed her hand. “Come along. I’ll take you to the kingdom. They’re always looking for people who will work for food and shelter. They will welcome you.”
I looked back at Michael once more. “Why aren’t you welcome?”
He chuckled. “I may or may not have enjoyed an evening or two with the queen’s sister.” His eyes sparkled and I knew which it was.
I grimaced and he laughed bitterly as always. “Hurry, you lot. Don’t leave me with the band of nakeds for too long.”
Greg smiled and touched arms gently. “It’s alright. Follow him into the woods and be safe. He won’t hurt you. He’s one of us. He’s from The Last City too.”
A man started to sniffle. “If our city was the last, what is that?”
Greg nodded. “Tomorrow is a new day. Just keep remembering that.”
He gripped Greg’s arm and squeezed. “Thank you for saving us.” They walked off as a naked herd.
I rubbed my eyes and tried not to imagine the fate of Lyle.
The smoke seemed much worse.
Greg sat next to me. “You were savage. How did you do that to her? Violence is against our nature. The guards suffer through their jobs. They hate them. How did you hurt her like that, with no regard?”
My eyes burned. I was breathing heavier, staring down at the burning city. My head finally snapped in his direction. “I don’t know. I was just so mad and so desperate to make her pay. It was easy. In fact, brother, I liked the way her skin split for my blade,” I spoke through clenched teeth.
His eyes widened. “What have you become? What is this doing to you?”